Last updated 1/22/2024
Many people have no withdrawal symptoms when they stop bupropion. Of course it’s always a good idea to taper off, rather than stop suddenly.
Many people will be reluctant to go get a new prescription just to stop. So they’ll try lowering the dose with the pills they have. In the case of bupropion, this will work out okay much of the time.
When it doesn’t, and you need to taper by smaller steps (as described on the Tapering Antidepressants page), here’s some information that might help.
If you do have to taper…
Most people will be using the 150 mg XL version at either 1, 2 or 3 pills per morning. Most people won’t have too much trouble with withdrawal either, so most people can simply lower their dose by one-pill steps to zero. (How fast? read the Tapering Antidepressants page).
However, if the first step down causes withdrawal symptoms, then you’d need to take smaller steps. To do that, get a prescription for the 100 mg SR version. Then you can take 50 mg steps down when you get below 300 mg:
Dose (mg) | PIlls |
450 | 3 x 150 mg XL |
300 | 2 x 150 mg XL |
250 | 1 x 150 mg XL 1 x 100 mg SR |
200 | 2 x 100 mg SR |
150 | 1 x 150 mg XL |
100 | 1 x 100 mg SR |
Can I cut the pills in half below 100 mg?
If you’ve had a rough time with taper steps, but have reached 100 mg, is there any way to avoid jumping to zero? Can you cut the 100 mg SR in half?
There are a handful of case reports about people chopping their bupropion XL in half and having a seizure. If that’s true, the risk would be higher with the SR version, suggesting that one should not cut an SR in half either.
But seizure risk is also dose related. If you’re all the way down to 100 mg SR per day, you’d think perhaps seizure risk is pretty much gone at that point. But to my knowledge, we have no data on that.
If the steps down to 100 mg were rough, you could get a 75 mg IR pill. Since that’s immediate release, you’d think cutting it in half (for 37.5 mg steps down) would not risk having a seizure. Seizures are very uncommon on bupropion anyway (but you certainly don’t want to have one; like driving, for example). In other words, “we don’t know what to tell you down at these doses.”